Muni Bonds are tax exempt and provide a good source of income.Disclosure is important to know if municipality has a chance of going bankrupt.Sure it will kill some issues, but transparency is essential for market trust.

While no individuals were held to account, a commissioner of the SEC said it would not show such restraint in future. In a typical conclusion to SEC civil investigations, Harrisburg agreed to settle the charges without admitting or denying the regulator's findings.

Muni Bonds are tax exempt and provide a good source of income.Disclosure is important to know if municipality has a chance of going bankrupt.Sure it will kill some issues, but transparency is essential for market trust.

Why go with a cat picture? It works better with a screencap from the source of the quote, which is "Goldfinger".

You'd think they'd have hired people who understand things like "money" and "laws" to handle a major city's finances, instead of just letting the mayor and the council run amok with hundreds of millions of dollars.

nytmare:You'd think they'd have hired people who understand things like "money" and "laws" to handle a major city's finances, instead of just letting the mayor and the council run amok with hundreds of millions of dollars.

I dunno, in Pittsburgh, the mayor's office kept a separate set of bank accounts for expenses, funded by redirecting payments to the police department for event security. These criminal masterminds found a loophole in the system: receipts were checked against deposits into the "official" accounts, but were never compared against invoices. So when the checks came in, they simply took them before they got entered as receipts. Since they were never received, the comparison between deposits and receipts always looked correct.

And here's the kicker: it's not clear that anything criminal actually happened here. It was a violation of basic accounting and common sense, and it certainly got the FBI's attention, but as it stands now, the mayor's simply not running for re-election, probably because he doesn't want anybody digging any deeper (apparently, the local PD has also buried a few DUIs for him, too, but that's just rumor).

Krumet:YixilTesiphon: There's an entertaining consultant's report out there which concludes that its waste-to-energy incinerator has a market value of $0.

Ah yes, working out as well as the one in Columbus 30 years ago.

But wait, there's more:Get ready for round two.Because it's different this time.

Hey, if there's no public money involved people can push whatever dumbass idea they want. WTE is a cool idea, and it works elsewhere, it just seems that Harrisburg hired a bunch of morons to build their plant, and compounded it by being Harrisburg.

Part of me feels like the state should just dissolve the current city of Harrisburg and merge it into Dauphin County or something, but I don't trust the state government to wipe their own butts without a payoff.

Harrisburg has been presented a viable plan to solve this mess. Without going into too much detail, it basically involves raising incinerator rates to something close to being economically sensible and leasing their parking authority assets. This will get Harrisburg 90% out of the hole. Unfortunately the Mayor and City Council are useless and refuse to do anything except biatch about the State placing them under the auspices of Act 49. We wouldn't be here if Harrisburg's elected officials had actually made any attempt at pursuing solutions to the mess.

Of course, the City is about to elect a new mayor named Sharky Butts so perhaps my expectations are a bit too lofty.

Quiefenburger:Harrisburg has been presented a viable plan to solve this mess. Without going into too much detail, it basically involves raising incinerator rates to something close to being economically sensible and leasing their parking authority assets. This will get Harrisburg 90% out of the hole. Unfortunately the Mayor and City Council are useless and refuse to do anything except biatch about the State placing them under the auspices of Act 49. We wouldn't be here if Harrisburg's elected officials had actually made any attempt at pursuing solutions to the mess.

Of course, the City is about to elect a new mayor named Sharky Butts so perhaps my expectations are a bit too lofty.

Haha, if Butts actually made mayor, the paper could go back to printing 7 days a week.